I was introduced to JMR loudspeakers by Paul Letteri, whose HighFidelityAudio company is the UK importer and direct retail supplier. Paul Letteri is an affable American who has
settled in Britain and undertaken the tricky task of setting up an entirely new
audio business over the past few months. Florida, just One US state, has over
600 hundred gun deaths a year which is more than the rest of the developed world
combined; so its easy to understand why Americans move to Europe. Paul is a nice
guy from Connecticut who has chosen to live in Europe so he obviously has taste
& discernment & married a girl who lives in Cambridgeshire.

The UK audio scene tends to involve small gene-pools that adhere to distinct
audio-philosophies. Although this has the advantage that importers carry a range
of lines that they know will work very well together, the downside is that lucky
accidents of synergy are less likely to be encountered. Paul seems to be trying
to use his experience to spot combinations that will work well together, that
may not seem obvious to the casual observer.

I was especially interested in the Jean Marie Reynaud range of loudspeakers that Paul imports. There are different quality levels and different sizes at each pricepoint. The pricepoints are not those typical of UK manufacturers, which might suggest that they're built to an idea rather than a market sector. This makes comparison difficult with rival brands on a similar-model value-for-money basis. So "I will not reason and compare"
(William Blake).

The JMR Arpeggione loudspeakers are originals, despite a superficial resemblance to several of the many small-footprint floorstanding models that have appeared in the last 10 years to supplement the dominant stand-mounted mini-monitor genre.
These take up no more floor-space than a miniature on a decent stand, but have the advantage of larger internal volume for increased power-handling, bass extension and sensitivity (often called efficiency), or at
least a better compromise when juggling these aspects or performance. Another major advantage is that the designer has more control over the floor-to-bass-driver distance and tweeter-ears relationship, knowing they will never be perched on a sideboard. Although most manufacturers now make similarly proportioned speakers, the only remotely similar product to the Arpeggione on the market is the 2-way, wood-veneered, transmission line loaded British PMC
GB1, with fabric-dome tweeter above 140mm poly-cone bass-mid, that costs £995 per pair.
For £700 the JMR is a two-&-a-half way, wood veneered, transmission-line & port loaded speaker, with fabric-domed horn-loaded tweeter below 125mm doped-pulp-cone (165mm chassis) bass-mid.

The Arpeggione are veneered on all four sides and top surface and finished with a satin laquer or varnish coat. They look great with the grilles off and the tweeter waveguide may provide some superficial protection in this mode. The grilles are unusual, being shaped like an inverted gothic arch, hinting at the driver arrangement underneath.
The grilles comprise a carefully shaped black-painted mdf frame covered with stretched knitted black material that is sadly not only visually opaque but fairly opaque to high treble too.
I removed them for listening and replaced them for protection at other times as their rigid frame and good quality fixings made this much easy.

The Arpeggione are 845mm tall (33" for neanderthals) but take up only
0.054 m^2 (0.58sq.ft) of floor area, which is less than a typical stand. They
need to be well away from walls but are slim enough not to intrude. They are
drilled and tapped for 4 adjustable spikes and here is my first gripe with this
loudspeaker.

Before I have even connected each Arpeggione to an amplifier they must be
levelled. Four spikes can never be set up to have perfectly equal pressure. Even
if they are embedded in a wooden floor they will soon no longer be equal due to
the natural expansion and contraction of the floor through temperature and
humidity changes.
On a more ideal masonry floor it is impossible to achieve perfect adjustment, whether or not through carpet. This means one spike will always be able to chatter with the vibration energy it is supposed to reference
to ground. To make matters worse the spikes lack any hex-facets (or even two
flats) and tightening the locknuts proved impossible without moving the position
of the spike. I spent a long time investigating 4 vs 3 spikes back in the late 80s and 4 was usually inferior to 3, because with all other factors equal 3 spikes will always be less likely to wobble. A 3 spike arrangement would require
a baseplate of larger footprint than the speaker to prevent toppling, but 3 spikes would still be easier to set-up and maintain and is likely to sound better most of the time. Do other enthusiasts readjust their spikes every time
your speakers are moved for cleaning or do they just live in a filthy pit to avoid moving any equipment?
Even if they did they would never achieve the integrity of a 3 point arrangement. After considerable time consuming experiment I ended up establishing which 3 spikes were best placed to support the centre of gravity and placed an Isonode (flexible Polymer) on a spacer under the fourth corner. This sounded better than the four spikes and as good as just 3 and
enabled a period of hassle-free positioning experiments without constant readjustment.

Arpeggione Aesthetics

The Arpeggione look very good, with a cherry stained "aniegre" veneer (I
don't know aniegre) and bevelled corners to reduce diffraction. The corner
bevels reveal a fillet of hardwood (looks like oak) stained cherry to match the
veneer, not an exposed strip of stained mdf like so many other brands. This is
an excellent touch at a pricepoint where plastic imitation veneer is still
common (euphemistically called ash-vinyl finish), B&W DM 603 S3 £600
floorstander for example.
These strips of hardwood will also improve sound
quality as they end by the spike inserts on the base and the speed of sound is
higher in hardwood than mdf. This technique might mitigate against the often
leaden acoustic qualities of mdf, which is usually chosen for its low cost
rather than its audio performance whatever the adverts might lead you to
believe. My own experiments (described in Speaker Builder 1999) indicated
that hardwood bracing of mdf trasformed its performance as a cabinet material,
regardless of how thin the strips of hardwood used.

Their styling draws mixed reactions. I like them. The inverted gothic-arched
grilles were the main bone-of-contention for two female visitors who said they
would prefer rectangular grilles. Most visitors male & female loved the
look, although some used to seeing bigger boxes in my system refused to believe
they would be adequate but were soon hearing tunes and forgetting the
system.

Engineering & Design

I was intrigued by the description of the bass loading system as a triangular
transmission line and I dug out my copy of Dr A R Bailey's May 1972 Wireless
World article describing a triangular version of the "Non-resonant
Loudspeaker Enclosure" he had described in the same journal in October 1965.
That first paper had introduced the transmission-line concept to loudspeaker
builders as a different approach to the tapered quarter-wave tube (TQWT)
introduced by Paul Voigt in 1934, or Olney's similar vintage labyrinthine
tuned quarter wave pipe (TQWP), but I am only aware of Radford previously
describing a commercial speaker as a triangular transmission line.
I contacted Jean Marie, who after apologising for his english, proceeded to explain the philosophy behind the design decisions. "The loading principle used is similar to the Bailey system (TQWT) but the line expansion formula is more
complex and the end of the line is with a tuned port". Very good English Jean Marie, you have no need to apologise.

Typically, the various tuned quarter-wave alignments match a pipe of length similar to a quarter of the wavelength of the free air resonance (known as fs in Thiele-Small parameters) to the rear of the driver. This loads the driver at
resonance similarly to a reflex enclosure with the power handling benefits of much reduced cone-excursion at resonance, but it does not have the fast 24dB per-octave roll-off (equivalent to a fourth order hi-pass filter) of the reflex
or vented alignments.
Reflex or ported alignments often have a sharp "knee" in the frequency response at the point where the roll-off begins, which can be an equivalent shape to a sealed-box Q=1.2 or greater. Both these reflex attributes
have the disadvantage of poorer transient response making bass sound slower, woolly or poorly controlled compared with lower Q and lower roll-off rate alignments. Theoretically a first order, 6dB per-octave, roll-off with Q=0.5
would have the best bass transient performance, but this could only be realised by an open baffle of stupendous proportions.

Even more interesting is that Bailey's addition of damping material (the main innovation in the 1965 article) to the tuned-pipe recipe actually reduces the equivalent Q even further (easily spotted on impedance curves) and the roll-off
rate to as low as 9dB per-octave, measured by Rick Schultz in Audio Express 8/03. This partly explains the very dry quality of transmission-line (TL) bass, and indeed why they often sound bass-shy. The myth that the pipe
output significantly augments bass response around the free air resonance is completely unfounded as soon as damping material is added to the line. My own first attempt at a TL was intended to wring every last drop of bass from a small
cheap driver and merely resulted in exposing what a small cheap driver it really was.

The JMR does not terminate the line with an equal-area vent, but with a tuned
port. The port area is slightly less than half the driver effective radiating
surface area which implies a fundamental difference from Dr Bailey's design.
Bailey's designs gave line cross-sectional area and vent size above that of the
driver radiating surface. I am guessing from the external dimensions of the
cabinet that the line area is similar to the driver area and tuned to about
45Hz, which should fall below 40Hz with suitable stuffing.

The typical rising midband response of a small driver with a big magnet is
addressed electrically in the Arpeggione. The woofer has dual voice-coils and is
specially manufactured for JMR by Audax, whose top quality reputation should be
familiar to most readers. One of the coils is fed from one set of the bi-wire
terminals via a simple 6dB per octave first-order slope falling from 1200Hz. The
upper terminal feeds the other coil and the tweeter (also made by Audax to Jean
Marie's design) via a series configured 12dB per octave crossover at 4500Hz. The
series crossover is less popular nowadays because it is harder to get right and
does not allow a bi-wiring split, but it does have a number of advantages in
component size and power handling, as described by Wilf Harms in HiFi News in
the 60s.
Each biwire terminal on the Arpeggione offers 8ohm load and it would be
interesting to bi-amplify them with identical amplifiers and cables. Because
each biwire terminal feeds half the main driver motor assembly it is essential
that similar construction same-length cables are used. I used 3x
Sonic-Link AST300 to each bass section and 1x Sonic-Link AST300
(now rebranded Black Rhodium) to the full range section. It is reasonable
value silver-plated multistrand copper found by Ben Duncan in HiFi news to have
the most benign electrical characteristics in a group test, and it is flexible
and easy to handle. Life is too short to waste time faffing with exotic
cables.

The units are designed at factory and built on specification by Audax, they
are exclusive. It's the same thing for the waveguide tweeter.

The Sound

The instructions note that these speakers take a lot of burn-in for the
drivers to loosen up and everything to settle. I left them running for several
days with talk radio (BBC Radio4) so that I did not make any premature
judgements with music. During the day this was running at realistic human speech
levels and during the night merely muttering quietly to themselves. When fired
up with music they had the typical dry transmission-line bass and really
fleet-of-foot timing and pace. I began to categorise them as real flat-earth
speakers.

Over the next two weeks they continued to loosen up and the bass began to
fill out a little more, gradually taking on almost BBC balance. I do not mean
the excessive plumminess that makes cellos sound like they have flabby worn-out
strings, but I do mean that extra weight that a full orchestra pizzicato passage
has when heard a few rows back in the concert hall but which few modern domestic
speakers achieve. So the balance is not typically flat-earth dry but the pace,
rhythm and timing are flat-earth fast. The first speaker I heard pull off this
trick successfully was the original Naim SBL.
The Naim was much bigger and relied on wall reinforcement to go louder and deeper than the JMR but I was
immediately reminded of that experience despite aural memory's notorious
unreliability. The JMR and the Naim SBL sound very different but they share that
rare quality of being able to make good rhythm and full bass.

I enjoyed most kinds of music over those two weeks (except country &
western which I couldn't enjoy under any circumstances) until I became sure the
sound had stabilised. Now it was time to fill the lower chambers with sand and
hear whether this improves bass damping as claimed. Unfortunately the two square
plugs supplied were different; one being of a larger type than the other and had
been crudely cut to try to make it fit.
A quick trial demonstrated that it would
never fit in the hole so I contacted Paul who was unable to supply a replacement
fast enough but gave me permission to perform whatever surgery would be
necessary. This was the only quality complaint I can make about the fit and
finish of any aspect of these speakers and it seems a shame that one part
costing a few pennies should create such a bad impression.

Kiln dried sand is the only type to use for this job as the moisture content
of other sand specs may damage the glues and panels. Try finding kiln dried sand
in England in November. It is usually used for gap-filling in block paving so I
thought small bags would be available at any DIY emporium. After trying all the
big DIY sheds in two neighbouring cities I ended up having to buy 25kg of the
stuff from a builders' merchant.
Curious to know how much mass could be added, I carefully weighed 3.3kg into the right speaker, squeezing extra in by the same vibro-poker technique used in concrete casting for sculpture. I inserted the
square plastic plug and moved over to the other, into which I could only fit
3kg.
It is surprisingly difficult to fill the cavities with sand without causing
marks and scratches to the speaker's finish and I would suggest the hole would
be better placed on the bottom surface to accomplish this.

I was expecting the bass to tighten up even further and perhaps gain some
slam, and JMR only claim better bass damping for this operation. However, the
biggest immediate improvement was in the midrange. Vocals sounded clearer and
more natural immediately but the bass sounded slowed. At first I wondered if
this was a similar effect to sand filled pillar loudspeaker stands on old wooden
floors that usually sound sluggish compared with light open frame stands on
those floors. Wrong. Within one cd the speed had returned, presumably as the
sand settled. The main difference with the sand is that vocals are clearer and
bass goes much deeper. This applies on my cast concrete slab floor (approx 4m
x5m x15cm thick) and may not be right on a springy old wooden floor.

Playing the Lindsay Quartet cut of Janacek's Intimate Letters string
quartet showed the dynamics to be intact and the string tone spot-on. The
Lindsays are locally based, 40 miles away in Sheffield, so I am lucky enough to
have plenty of opportunities to enjoy them live, memorably once in Derby
Cathedral. The Arpeggione did a good enough musical job in my living room to
make it a worthwhile musical experience, which is all that matters. Smallish
speakers should be in their element with this scale of ensemble &
performance, but sadly most of the mini monitors I have heard just do not make
the grade.

The bass is ridiculously good for a little 165mm driver. To get this kind of
weight and frequency response from such a small driver would normally demand a
very long-throw unit with consequent lack of sensitivity, poor control and wooly
when loud. Pumping some really heavy bass through these babies from a 100wpc
(with 1kva power supply) class AB bipolar amplifier did not phase it. This amp
has only 6dB of global feedback and so might be upset by a wild impedance curve
(although it can handle very low linear loads) but the gradually rising
impedance (not specified or accurately measured) presented no problems.

With such a small main driver the dispersion characteristics around the
crossover frequency are excellent. Good in-room power response makes setting up
and positioning very easy. The full bass response demands they are placed in
what David Wilson calls the zone of neutrality in the Wilson Audio Setup
procedure WASP
which in most rooms will be at least 1m from side walls and the same from the
rear (but never equal). Varying spacing and toe-in made changes to soundstage
but not to voicing which is a hallmark of good crossover design and driver
integration. Dispersion was good enough to place them wider apart than my usual
speakers, improving soundstage scale at no expense.

The small driver is this speaker's main compromise giving hints at Jean
Marie's priorities. Micro-dynamics are excellent, the subtle nuances of
performance and instrument tellingly portrayed, but macro-dynamics do suffer.
The visceral slam of large drivers is missing. Compression becomes apparent at
quite modest levels. Although they major on the flat-earth priorities of PRaT
they offer a different presentation to typical flat-earth classics like the Epos
ES14, and Epos did the two-&-a-half way floorstander ES22, which was also
voiced like the ES14. The silk-dome tweeter of the JMR Arpeggione is all
sweetness & detail without the rising response of the Epos metal dome (very
similar to the Elac and Monitor Audio metal-domes of the same era) so ride
cymbals are more explicit on the JMR while crash cymbals crash less. The lean
bass of the Epos could not be more differently voiced from the Arpeggione, yet
both achieve deft speed.
At higher volumes the bass of the Arpeggione loses some
of its clarity and tunefulness (really loud bass tends converge on the note of
the tuning alignment) but this is inevitable with all alignments that veer away
from the maximum power-handling B4 reflex. My personal opinion is that Jean
Marie has made the right decision for my own taste, and if you need to run at
high power levels all the time, due to taste and room size (dancehall & dub
spread over 50m^3), than you need bigger speakers with larger drivers.

Dynamics is more than just the capacity to swing from quiet to loud and back
again quickly. Dynamics includes the initial transient of every note and its
relationship to that note. Dynamics includes the decay of each note and its
relationship to the spatial-acoustics and to the transients of other notes.
These aspects of musical performance are what carry many of the subtle cues that
bring tears to our eyes or wrench our hearts. The piano is one of the most
difficult instruments to capture in this respect on a domestic audio system, the
technology of a piano may seem simple and commonplace but it works better than
any audio electronics have yet achieved. I first heard Janacek's On an Overgrown
Path performed by Ivan KlŠnsky (of
the Guarneri Trio)
in Nottingham nearly five years ago. During that performance I fell in love with
both the music and the woman sitting next to me, who cried at it. The 1982
Supraphon recording SU3287-2-111 of KlŠnsky performing this piece
captures a similarly percussive modern piano sound combined with a haunting
performance although recorded nearly 20 years earlier in Prague. The Arpeggione
made a fair job of making it happen in the listening room, the fluidity of
KlŠnsky's playing being clearly expressed with only some congestion and hardness
at the loudest peaks to indicate these are small loudspeakers. The sections
'Unutterable Anguish' and 'In Tears', composed shortly after Janacek's daughter
Olga's tragic death, do convey these emotions through the Arpeggione.

Conclusion

A great little floorstander that is uncritical of position as long as it is
more than a metre from any walls. It is clear, detailed and sweet, and above all
it preserves the core musical qualities of tunefulness, pitch and pace, rhythm
and timing. The bass loading is unusual and makes the best of the little
bass-mid divers, but do not like to play too loud when dynamics and pitch become
compromised.

The finish is good, I liked the real wood corner fillets, and they should
fill typical domestic rooms up to **m^2. The impedance is nominally 4ohms with
no unusually wild shifts but does rise with frequency which might cause
frequency response anomalies some low-feedback valve amplifiers. The dispersion
characteristic and crossover makes positioning uncritical so they should suit
many listeners whose taste is for pace, rhythm and tunefulness.

The Jean Marie Reynaud JMR Arpeggione look and sound different
from the mainstream and deserve a viable market for that reason alone but they
really are good musical speakers that punch way above their weight for size and
price.